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Google Confirms Panda Update Is Rolling Out: This One Is More “Finely Targeted”

This morning, I noticed a possible Panda update was rolling out, one that seemed to be “softer” in nature than the previous updates, where many webmasters who were originally hit by the algorithm are now claiming recovery.

Google has confirmed a Panda update is rolling out and this specific update is “more finely targeted.”

As you may remember, Google told us new Panda algorithms are being pushed out monthly over a ten day period. Google’s Matt Cutts did imply there was a bit of a delay in pushing out their monthly Panda refresh because they wanted to release signals that would soften the algorithm a bit.

Google confirmed with us that a Panda update is being released and said:

In the last few days we’ve been pushing out a new Panda update that incorporates new signals so it can be more finely targeted.

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What happened to the Panda update on June 25, 2013? There was some confusion at the time about that being update #27 and skipping #26 due to unknown changes and impact?

Durant Imboden

Something happened on May 8-9, too.

Lisa Hosman

I am thinking that this Panda update started rolling out on Sunday and Monday. Had a client that did major 301 redirects to get rid of duplicate content almost a year ago. About 2 weeks ago, I noticed that the duplicate content pages were finally all out of the index. Then all of the sudden on Sunday, they shot back up to search positions they had over a year ago for most of their major terms. And they are higher for the main search phrase than ever before. Nice to finally have an update that brings good news!

Ian Leong

IIRC, May 8-9 was the “Phantom Update” with unknown changes that created the confusion in numerical sequencing. At the end of the day, it’s not a big deal, but I’ve already made numerous annotations in reports designating June 25, 2013 as Panda 27.

http://rahulonlineblog.blogspot.in/ Rahul Gupta

I absolutely agree with Lisa that same I’ve noticed on Sunday itself, some of keywords which was on third page and some of on second page, I saw a positive impact on same that came up in Google’s first page but in a same time still not sure about the negative impact if occurs in any projects.

CarlosVelez

Interesting. We’re seeing a growth in our traffic this week as well. We also had some duplicate content issues that we addressed.

http://www.archology.com/ Jenny Halasz

We’re seeing recovery for two of our clients that had minor Panda transgressions which landed them in major trouble. While we had planned changes to the content, they haven’t been implemented yet. We’ll still implement the changes because they’re better for UX, but it’s nice to see the more finely tuned algorithm.

daveintheuk

Presumably once again this “targeted” at a niche where they are aiming to dominate with their own properties (I put own content for a moment, but then I realised it isn’t – their content is just thin data, low quality UGC and scraped content).

analytics

Does Google have a tool that a website owner could run to evaluate the site for Panda or Penguin type issues? This would give the designers an opportunity to correct issues before the sites are crawled.

http://kercommunications.com/ Nick Ker

Google is not in the habit of making checklists, since spammers would try to use that to find new ways to cheat the system.

Penguin is, for the most part, about links. Since you are asking about correcting issues before the site is crawled, you probably don’t need to worry about Penguin. That is, unless you have been building links to the site before any real people would have found it on their own.

The best tool to analyze your links is your brain.
Ask yourself the following:

Are the incoming links legitimate, or are they something you paid for or otherwise had some control over?

Do many of your incoming links use your keywords? If most of them do use the exact same few keywords, you are likely to end up with a Penguin problem.

Panda is about quality.
Again, best tool is common sense.
Is your content original – not copied, not just rewritten stuff from somewhere else? Plagiarized, scraped, spun, and otherwise unoriginal content is a risk.

Do you have a lot of the same content appearing at multiple URLs on the site? Duplicate content is one of the most frequent things I encounter when analyzing Panda issues.

Is the content actually good quality, or just filler? If you are publishing pages or blog posts that offer nothing of value to users, just so you can get more pages and maybe more keywords on the site, this is also a Panda risk.

For the technical quality factors that you may not be able to instantly know by asking yourself some questions and giving honest answers, try Moz.com’s crawl report. It will point out duplicate content and title issues, as well as a number of other things you can do to improve your site. There are other online tools, but Moz is pretty reliable, while many others can be pretty inaccurate and flag things that aren’t really a problem.

We haven’t been link-building for the past year but our site was targeted by negative SEO tactic recently. This has me worried.

http://www.20milesnorth.com/ Rob Jenkins

The more they panda-ize and flood Google with ads, the more people will start using Bing. It is not just SEO pros getting hit, it is actually seemingly worsening search results. Get in ahead of the curve imo.

http://www.eemes.com/ Jack SEO Consultant – Eemes

I can see high traffic in blogs on July 17, 2013 which means panda actually started on July 17. I can see high increase in Page views!

http://www.eemes.com/ Jack SEO Consultant – Eemes

Yes i agree this is update is targeted to traffic boost :)

eDigitalFields

We have observed this change to our site. There is a little improvement in our site traffic, edigitalfields.com – let’s hope for the best.

http://www.rejionline.net/ Reji Kumar

Hope to get more ranking with our site. Many thanks for this updation …..

Sonal Saraswat

yes,I agree with it.I can see improvement in ranking and traffic.

http://www.nathanielbailey.co.uk/ Nathaniel Bailey

We did have one larger clients rankings improve quite a bit across
the whole board on the 15th, but that’s the only big change’s’ I have
seen of late.

We still can’t see exactly why all the keywords we track for this client improved
all of a sudden over night because they have never been hit by Panda or
Penguin, but I guess the improvements could be due to other sites being
hit by the latest update if google started to role it out at the
beginning of the week?

Forgot to mention, their traffic has also shot up (could just be the weather as they sell summer products, but worth mentioning) from around 1k a day to 10k+ a day!

http://www.aumcore.com/ Aumcore

Even we are not effected by any of the Panda updates but I noticed fluctuation in the ranking in last few days and we also absorbed some improvement in the traffic of our website http://www.aumcore.com. Hope for the best for websites effected by previous Panda updates.

Sonal Saraswat

I agree with this post,I also realize the panda upadate .I can see improvement in both ranking and traffic.My projects ranking and traffic are also improved.

Sonal Saraswat

yes,I agree with this post.I also realize the panda update.I can see improvement in ranking and traffic.

Supriya Infotech

Yesterday, i was checking my website rank and i found a shock result that it has got rank and i was confused about it but now i have understand it.

Talkin Hockey

With every update, Google makes their results less and less relevant. At first I thought it was a miscalculation on how to improve results, but now its obvious they are just trying to make people use their ads, by giving back horrid results. Sad. Hopefully Bing keeps building momentum.

Roxana Nasoi

This was one strange week. I see my blog went up 2 positions in #1st page Google for some keywords, but also noticed one of my client’s websites dropped from #7 to #9, same page.

localseocalgary

Yes plz let me know about the Google Panda update of 25th june 2013

Peter K. Lam

Is there an outline on the scope of this latest update? “Finely tuned” is rather vague.

http://www.searcheccentric.com/ Faisal Kaleem

I believe Google is updating their algorithm on daily basis. Now days I
never found top 10 results are same for week in any competitive keywords from
SEO, development, Mobile applications related keywords as I check rankings on
daily basis.

It seems to be Google hired some bloggers or sites owners they portrays Google
algorithms in confused manner.

I believe that we need to change our SEO strategy and look for other option
also as viral marketing is good if we have good budget. We really don’t need to
depend only on Google CHACHA (uncle):)

http://www.pongosystem.blogspot.com mpongo system

j’aime ça

http://www.deepaktiwari.in/ Deepak Tiwari

More frequent updates from Google, and people will start ignoring them. I mean how long SEO would track the updates of inconsequential nature. Google should come up with major updates and not minor ones every now and then to help professionals have a track.

Durant Imboden

“More frequent updates from Google, and people will start ignoring them.”

Maybe, and I suspect Google wouldn’t mind that at all.

Durant Imboden

“I believe Google is updating their algorithm on daily basis.”

They claim to fiddle with the algorithm at least 500 times a year. That averages out to even more than one tweak or update per day.

http://www.deepaktiwari.in/ Deepak Tiwari

LOL! Google is a totalitarian in numerous ways. It will fall due to its own contradictions.

http://www.kyleeggleston.com/ Kyle Eggleston

Many of my client’s focus keywords improve 1 or 2 positions as a result of this update.

Ty

I really think this last refresh rolled out as early as July 13th. I have seen on site with very strong gains 60-80% starting last Saturday.

shahzebit

One of the brilliant Panda & Penguin Recovery Comment i have found till yet :)

Guest

On July 17 2013 I had 683 Visitors and was Increasing daily but then (Stats according to Google Analytics):-

Hi all – I’m NOT an SEO expert, but without so being, I’m convinced – and I’m trying to convince my boss – that article writing for SEO purposes is a bad strategy likely to hurt SERP rankings as much as help. My boss wants to post multiple articles on article repository sites with a couple links linking to our page. Duplicate articles will be strongly written but generic, and likely to just sit, mostly unread, on article sites.

Can someone confirm that this is a ridiculous strategy? We’re a quality financial services business, not some dodgy ad-filled website trying to build traffic and peddle clicks or some rinky-dink product.

If anyone can help, it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

http://www.smashpixels.com/ Gautham@SmashPixels

Why is Google always centered on rolling frequent algorithm updates in the mask of fighting web spam. I seriously think this is affecting webmasters by providing a inconsistent and uncertain source. I’ve personally seen many blogs following natural link building and getting hit by Panda or Penguin for silly reasons. http://www.edupdates.in/

http://www.dbsit.com.au/ Asif Faridi

Yes, our website ranking fluctuated high on july 17, 2013. we have noticed that after webpage cache on same day change our ranking too.

Pramod

I believe it started on July 14 after 4 to 5 PM (IST). My site too has recovered. Thanks to Google !!

http://www.searcheccentric.com/ Faisal Kaleem

@Gautham@SmashPixels

Don’t put your all egg in one basket. Why you don’t look other online marketing tool? Think about link bait, viral marketing, social networking etc, there are other resources by this way you can generate traffic for your website and eventually you will get some conversion for your website. You need to inculcate in your mind what needs to be done for other open marketing options.

And don’t follow anyone here including me I guess, it could be possible you are one of my competitor :)

Adilkhankakar

due to this update my website visitors got less i dont know why before 7 july it was quite good but after it the visitors got less

http://www.techtiptricks.com/ Dhams

Just wondering if something has happened in last 2-3 days, as most of my keywords affected drastically and i dropped traffic like never before… almost 60-70% drop in my average traffic…. any help or clue will be highly appreciated

http://www.searcheccentric.com/ Faisal Kaleem

Dhams

Check your webmaster and see if you are getting any webmaster errors on it including duplicate page title and meta, check you blog categories, tags which are being index on Google or you didn’t put “nofollow” attribute on it check your canonical attribute etc.

Also check you content which is being duplicate by external resources or not.